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View Full Version : Struggling to adjust water temperature using a thermostatic shower...


guillaume69
Jan 5, 2016, 01:41 PM
Hello!

We recently bought a house that is equipped with a thermostatic shower. The problem we are having is that the water temperature coming out of the shower is not warm enough for our taste - it's just mild and basically only a few degrees above being too cold.

We've tried Googling and looking for tutorials / how-to guides and while there are many on thermostatic showers, none is relevant based on the type of thermostatic shower that we have. I also could not find any old bill or invoice with the model of the shower so at this stage I am not sure how to find information on brand / model (which surely would help tremendously in finding how to adjust the shower, if at all possible).

I've made a few photos here and hoping that someone might be able to help us here, because getting up in the morning to a shower that is not hot enough is not a great feeling!

I've attached a few photos. There's:

a photo of the shower,
a photo of the shower with the mixer removed (I tried to toy under here without making any difference),
a photo of the pipes coming in. There one pipe for the cold water, one for the hot water . They both go to the mixer and then come back in one pipe above that then goes to the shower head.
on those hot and cold pipes, there's a screw.


My questions are: does anyone by any chance have any idea what this shower model is? Or if not how it could be adjusted? Can the screws on the pipes be used to control the amount of hot or cold water going to the shower, and thereby the temperature (I assume not, since the thermostatic shower would automatically regulate to generate the temperature set, which is too cold for us)?

Any information to troubleshoot this issue would be welcome! We actually dropped by a small shop selling shower stuff next door, however the guy was not really helpful and he mentioned it might be that the thermometer inside the mixer is dead or dying, which he said often results in the shower temperature being too hot or too cold. However not sure if he was saying so to get us to buy something from his shop...

Thanks!

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hkstroud
Jan 5, 2016, 02:15 PM
on those hot and cold pipes, there's a screw.
Assuming that the screw you refer to is shown below and that there is on on each the hot and cold pipes. That is a stop valve. It is use to turn off the water so that the valve can be serviced with out turning the water to the house.

The one shown is turned about half way off. The valve is fully open when the slot is parallel to the pipe. It is fully off when turned perpendicular to the pipe.

massplumber2008
Jan 5, 2016, 05:40 PM
I believe that's is a Grohe or Hans-Grohe valve... Google the names and contact the manufacturer with your pictures... they should be able to help, including parts under lifetime warranty! These can be tricky to adjust temperature, but I'm pretty sure that's is your issue.

Back to you...

Mark

guillaume69
Jan 7, 2016, 01:20 PM
Thanks both for your feedback!

After playing with the stop valves on the hot and cold pipes tonight, it looks like we've managed to increase the temperature of the shower (opening or closing a bit the stop valve for hot water made no difference but closing a bit the valve on the cold pipe fixed our problem). Not sure that makes much sense as I thought a thermostatic shower was supposed to regulate the temperature automatically, hence if simply changing how much cold versus hot water goes into the shower is sufficient to adjust the temperature, that's not much of a thermostatic shower!

I'll nonetheless also follow your recommendations and reach out to Grohe and Hans-Grohe just in case, though I don't think our shower is of those brands as else the brand name would be written somewhere. I think our shower is just a cheap noname shower...

Problem solved, thanks all :)